Last spring I picked up two Cinderella Pumpkin seedlings at one of RIPE’s monthly garden swaps we hold in our local park. I didn’t know anything about the squash except that the pumpkins resembled the pumpkin used to make Cinderella’s magical carriage. I thought they were of the decorative sort.

I planted them in a corner of my community garden plot, made sure they had water, and largely ignored them for a few months. Continue reading →

In my backyard garden I put up small fences around many of the garden boxes to keep out the feral cats and the raccoons. Inadvertently, they are now (more or less) keeping out a third destroyer of vegetable garden delights – my almost three-year-old. His motivations are heartwarming. He is not digging for grubs, tearing out anything in his way. He is not looking for a good bathroom. He is actually looking for a tasty snack.

With the start of school a few months ago, my daughter in Kindergarten and my son to preschool, I got swept up in a new routine, new communities, new anxieties….The garden waited. I mustered up enough time just to get the essentials done. Pull out the tired summer crops. Start cole crops. Dig in goat manure. Call on the garlic order that had not arrived. Plant peas. Things settled down just in the nick of time for the big push. Turning soil. Planting the garlic. Transplanting the cole crops. Sowing a second round of peas, carrots, and lettuce. Just in time.

I feel like I have ventured into new gardening territory, a land where things grow big, really, really big. The plot at the community garden is literally bursting at the seams. The bean vines are all tangled up with the squash vine, which is all tangled up with the cucumbers that are growing into the zucchini. Seriously. Some things are so big they have far surpassed any spacing suggestions that would have kept them out of the way of other plants. Continue reading →